A delightful evening at the Ronald Reagan Library

We have had a wonderful week, beginning with an evening celebrating the 25th Anniversary for TMS at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library...Here is a link to check out their galleries and virtual tours:
http://www.reaganlibrary.com/
Here is a pic of us at the entrance:

Now, I am sure that some of you would have seen the program- "Where's Wally?" Well- let me know if you can spot Izak! hehe.

We traveled to the venue with Bob and Lenore- it was lovely to catch up with such busy lives all round!
Here they are at the entrance:

And then we got a look at a 60'x20' replica the white house:
(It is shown all over the country and is updated with the new president's changes to the oval office etc...)

I love how this one almost looks like a real life limo! But... it is just part of the display:

Here is a small glimpse of the Oval office currently:

Then, onwards we adventured, deeper into the Ronald Reagan museum...

They had a life size room made up to be like the Oval Office when Reagan was president:

These and other giant and colourful pictures mark the halls of the museum:

We then followed the crowds to the pavilion which hosted Air Force One and the actual celebratory banquet:

Here I am standing in front of Air Force One: (Typically you get to go through the plane to get down to the pavilion, but we were a little late...)

 Here you see some guests making their way through the plane:

 This is a picture of the pavilion from above:

 Here is a closer look at what the tables looked like:

 The singer- Jubilant Sykes blew us away with his beautiful voice:

 Here is a close-up of our delicious meal: (salmon, steak, delicious salad and vegetables!)

Here is one of the two of us standing under Air Force One at the end of the evening... courtesy of Lenore...

 And to top it off, each table could take the centre-piece home and I was nominated to take our tables!
Our first All American vase:

I planned to include info from the Shepherds Conference, but will do that with our next post! There was just too much to include. We were glad to bump into Dave and Mary Gillies at the Banquet- but don't have a picture to prove it! 

Well, until next time! Totsiens!

Beloved snow and meet the EWG and Sem wives ladies!

I have secretly (Alright, perhaps not so secretly!) been hoping for it to snow this winter but it hasn't snowed in La Crescenta since +-1984 and this stat according to Pat our WPC- Weather Report Landlady! But it suddenly began getting very cold and one morning on our way to the campus we looked up and... saw SNOW-covered mountains!

Well, with this development, I began hoping even more for snow in the normally sunny California... and....

TA-DA! It did! Here are the Bakkes' enjoying some Californian snow:

I have been planning to  introduce you to the Every Woman's Grace group and also to the Sem Wives group.... So at last, here are pictures of both. 


This is the EWG Bible Study Group: (We meet at 10 on Wednesday mornings...)

 I thought that I had managed to capture everyone, but missed Dot who is the lady right on the right end- she is so precious and couldn't resist putting up an extra picture so that you can see her! So encouraging to meet these more 'mature' ladies who have walked with the Lord for so many years and who love Him so much still.

Then, our International Sem Wives group which meets at 7pm on Wednesdays.
We have ladies from South Africa, England, Australia, the Philippines, Germany and Belgium...

More exciting news! We are going to the 25th Anniversary TMS Celebration Banquet this Friday, which is going to be a formal 'do' hosted at the Ronald Reagan Presidential library! They are having a well known singer called Jubilant Sykes performing and also John Macarthur will be sharing about the last 25 years of The Masters Seminary! What a blessing to be here during this time in order to be a part of this! :) 

Here is a link to check out the venue in more detail:
http://www.reaganlibrary.com/
We are excited to get to tour the library and they even have a small replica of the Oval Office that is available for viewing which we will hopefully get to see too!
Here is a link to the Oval Office exhibition:
http://www.reaganlibrary.com/details_f.aspx?p=LM2002EX&h1=7&h2=3&lm=libraryandmuseum&args_a=cms&args_b=32&argsb=N&tx=15&sw=15

We hope to take lots of pictures! So perhaps in the next blog post, you will see our smiling faces touring the library and 'Oval Office'! 


The Shepherd's conference begins next week and like I mentioned before, I will be volunteering to work alongside Izak in the shipping department and I am really looking forward to seeing 3000 pastors flocking in from all over the world and hoping to serve them alongside the other 500 Grace Community Church members!


I took these pictures just this afternoon so that you can see the Shepherds Conference preparations:

In closing, Izak said something good about the snow we had on the La Crescenta mountains recently, based on Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."


He said, ...come rain or shine, these mountains have always been a dull brown but now, for the first time, they were a beautiful white! It reminds me of God's grace to those who believe in His Son. His  grace covers our sin, so that all He sees, when He looks at us, is His own righteousness through Jesus!


Have a great 'rest of the week' and we hope to hear from you soon!

When things are a little quieter...

I just chatted to Jansie for a little bit and realised that I have stopped blogging if I haven't got loads of pictures and new adventures to tell you about... Well, I am going to try and keep in touch, even when it is a brief update like today's post. 

Izak has been extremely busy as usual. He has been working hard on catching up on school work and it's starting to get busier now that the Shepherds conference is on the way! (Since he does shipping he will be extremely busy with shipping books back for pastors that come to the conference!) I am volunteering to help with shipping and will get to work with Izak! There are about 500 volunteers for the Shepherds conference week and it is apparently all done in such excellence. What a privilege to be apart of this years conference. 

Izak hopes to work hard on some book outlines for Old Testament 2 this weekend and to write some synopsis papers. It is tricky to get up to date when you lag behind since the new workload doesn't diminish! Please continue to pray for his time management and for wisdom to know what to tackle first.

He got his results back for the first Hebrew exam and did well. Thank you for praying for him.

We have been doing work on translating Genesis and it has been such a challenging but good experience!

We had a cozy Sem Wives group meeting this last week, with only four of us being able to make it. (It may have been because it has been such an icy cold week of weather in LA- minus 1 degrees Celsius at times!) When we were all chatting one of the ladies mentioned that she had these verses, from Ephesians 5:15-16 on her heart. It says, " Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." 

It was interesting since we have been working through Ephesians at the "Every Woman's Grace" Bible study, I had actually printed it out and put it on the fridge since it is so easy to waste time and to not redeem it! 
(If you would like to download the study, it is available online and even divided up into daily portions for devotions... Very well done and helps you to dig deeper...)
Here is a link to the site:
http://www.gracechurch.org/ministries/resources.aspx?MinistryID=68

It is good to try to keep in mind that we have no idea how many days we will have on this earth and to use our time wisely. 

The lady that spoke at the "Every Woman's Grace" Bible study this Wednesday said that stats reveal that the average person uses +-4 hours per day of their awake time watching TV and another 2 hours online/on their computer per day... When you think about that as an annual estimate, you end up spending +-2 months watching TV and being online/ on your computer! Quite frightening to account for that much time wasted!


When Vicky and Andrew left LA, they left us a plant and it really brings me great joy to see new plant life activity!

Then... we received a gift voucher for In-N-Out this week as a surprise in the post!

And... our one landlady- Ina has timeshare and she booked us into a really nice resort that is just north of San Francisco for a few days in June! It is in a city called Windsor... We couldn't even afford to go on this kind of vacation in South Africa when we were both working... so it just testifies of the Lord's kindness to us!


Thank you for reading our blog and please keep in touch!

Ryan's pizza party'tjie and Rowan's visit

As you more than likely realised, we have been quieter than usual! It has been a combination of:
- Izak contracting a very serious version of the flu (that required H1N1 treatment- tamiflu) 
- The starting up of seminary and 
- A visit from my brother, Rowan!

Here are a few highlights from the last weeks...

Ryan and Elna invited us to join them for Ryan's birthday bash at the Botes' and it was a lot of fun! Here are a few glimpses: 
The pizza arrives: (This is a winning formula to a good party!)

The happy celebrating couple: (Note the party hat! hehe)

The lovely hosting family- Ryk and Lynette Botes:

Ryan and Elna had friends visiting from Pretoria and it was great fun to meet them!
Here they are- Jonathan and Joy:

And to top off the delicious meal, Lynette made good old South African milk tart:

and peppermint crisp and caramel tart:

It was a great time of getting to know each other better and lots of laughter!


Then, Rowan arrived for his visit! We have been looking forward to it for the longest time and it was so amazing to have him here. 

One funny thing was that we borrowed an air mattress from friends of ours and it turned out to be a queen size aero-bed which was a very nice type... (it only needs plugging in and a flick of a button to inflate!) Soon enough the aero-bed grew and grew... and grew! And it was higher and wider than our bed and our home was one big jumping castle! hehe! It was fine for a couple of nights but then we were given a twin size inflatable mattress which worked a little better, since it enabled us to walk around in our home and have the bed set up simultaneously! It has been such a fun family camp-up week!

Love this one of Rowan- on our couch in California! :)

Here is one of where we do most of our grocery shopping:

Rowan kept commenting on the palm trees that are all over. It is something that you stop noticing!


We did some other shopping too...

Rowan came along to all the classes at TMS, here he is in front of the sign:

 And the beloved bookstore:

Here is one of Rowan and I:

And... after a week of camping out... These before and after pics indicate how living in each others space can improve family relations!
Before:

After:

Hehe! We had such fun times, we will miss Rowan and are hoping that he returns soon!


Well, last time I mentioned the other San Francisco pics- here are some of our momentos in our home:
Our San Francisco corner:

And our little model pencil sharpener and cable car magnet:

When we got to see this opportunity through Rowan's eyes, it made us reflect on how the Lord has undertaken for us by bringing us across the world to have such wonderful and rich experiences and it has all drawn us closer to Him and made our hearts even more thankful for life and all that it entails!
This Psalm is our prayer:

Psalm 43:3a, “Send out Your light and Your truth; let them lead me..."

I submitted an article to "the Distaff", it is a sem wives journal and it was published this month. It is all about how the Lord made a way for us to get here and it is only a very shortened version, but if you would like to read it, you can click on this link: http://www.tms.edu/semwivesweb/distaff.asp and download the February distaff.


We look forward to hearing from you!